Parma FC face ruin as a dynasty crashes

As they stretched their multi-million-pound muscles for a big match against Inter Milan last night, the star-studded Parma football team must have found it hard to keep their minds on the ball.

Just 24 hours before, the entire board of directors had resigned, among them the president, Stefano Tanzi whose family is embroiled in the financial scandal at the food group Parmalat. Whether they won or lost this weekend's home match, the team already seem doomed.

The Serie A club, which rose from provincial oblivion to the top of the Italian and the European football scene over the past decade, is riddled with debt.

Its patrons, the Tanzi family, have gone from local hero to international pariah status in the past few weeks as Parmalat, a multi-billion pound milk business, turns out to have been one of the biggest corporate cons in history.

Parma is up for sale and the club is cashing in on its best players to help pay the others' salaries. Three were put on the transfer list last week: striker Emiliano Bonazzoli, defender Aimo Diana and the Brazilian star striker Adriano are to go to rival Italian clubs. Other talent up for grabs includes Italian under-21 star Alberto Gilardino, French goalkeeper Sebastiano Frey, Brazilian midfielder Junior and Japanese star Hidetoshi Nakata. Chelsea are thought to be interested in Frey.

When the Tanzis began pumping Parmalat's millions into their home club in 1991, Parma soared from provincial oblivion to become one of the top 10 Italian teams. In the 1990s, they won the European Cup Winners Cup once and the Uefa Cup twice.

Last week, local boy Simone Barone dedicated the club's 2-0 victory over Ancona, in which he scored both goals, to his beleaguered home town. The people of Parma remain in shock at the collapse of what was seen as one of the town's most solid industrial successes. The club's general manager Patrick Nebiolo continues to insist that the side, which contains five of the Italian under-21 team, will not shed all its players and described yesterday's match as a chance for the team to 'focus'.

But while having a Serie A team was a bonus for this small, renaissance town, most of its 170,000 residents have always been more loyal to their gastronomic traditions than their sporting ventures. Fans were few and far between. Barely 2,000 tickets had been sold yesterday morning for last night's match.

'This was what they call a situazione gonfiata (a situation blown out of proportion),' said Tim Parks, the British author of A Season With Verona. 'Real football followers will not be sad to see the end of a team that had no fans.'

Like all of Italy's dynastic business families, football was the toy of the Tanzi family in their glory years. Calisto Tanzi, the disgraced head of the family currently in a Milan jail, bought Parma in 1991.

'In Italy, you haven't really arrived until you own a football club,' Parks said. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Fiat founders the Agnellis and the oil baron Massimo Moratti are the surviving millionaires behind Italy's biggest teams, Milan, Juventus and Inter. Others, such as former Lazio boss Sergio Cragnotti and the former Fiorentina owner, Vittorio Cecchi Gori, have crashed amid financial chaos in recent years. Parma's fleeting success is expected to evaporate with its cash.

'The players are good; they know what they are worth,' said Parks. 'I wouldn't be surprised if Parma suddenly collapse. Players won't be able to concentrate. They will be spending time on the phone, looking for another job.'

As Parma soared in the 1990s, the Tanzis, it now emerges, were floundering with a €77 million hole in last year's accounts. As investigations deepen into the possible €10 billion book-fiddling scam at Parmalat, many fear more losses at the club may yet be discovered. On Thursday, a spokesman for Italian Indus try Minister Antonio Marzano indicated Parma would be sold at the end of the season. The next day, the Tanzis accepted defeat. Stefano, the oldest son of the family, resigned as president of the club, along with Paolo Tanzi, Calisto's brother who was also on the board.

A new board is expected to be nominated next week and Parma fans continue to hope that another local millionaire family may bail the club out. The pasta giants Barilla, Parma's remaining industrial success story, have however shown little interest.

'I find it hard to feel sorry for the football players,' said Alessandra Galletti, a housewife out shopping in the centre of Parma. 'It's the shareholders and factory workers who depend on Parmalat I worry about. They're the ones who might lose everything.'